


Leverage, Season 3, Episode 11, The Rashomon Job

by TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer



Category: Leverage
Genre: Analysis, Episode Review, Episode: s03e11 The Rashomon Job, Meta, Nonfiction, Season/Series 03, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:28:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24591583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer/pseuds/TheSomewhatRamblingReviewer
Summary: Warning: Contains spoilers for the episode and the rest of the series. Complete.
Comments: 11
Kudos: 9





	Leverage, Season 3, Episode 11, The Rashomon Job

I love this episode, and John Billingsley’s Coswell is one of my favourite one-shot characters.

In the bar, Sophie and her future sons-in-law are arguing, and Parker goes to get Nate. It took me a few rewatches to realise this, but Nate actually tells the employees who are closing up that Team Leverage will close up, and an employee just hands over the keys before they all bounce.

Sure, they helped save the bar, but still, I guess the concern about Team Leverage helping themselves to drinks is either something they think Team Leverage won’t do (they do) or they believe any drinks will be paid for (it’s unknown if the drinks are paid for at a later date or not).

To give Team Leverage some credit, the bar is properly closed when they leave at the end of the episode.

The threesome are arguing over who stole a dagger a few years back. Nate asks if they were **all** there, and Parker doesn’t respond.

Nate has about 90% of the most accurate version of the story, but out of the foursome, Parker might be the most unbiased and honest due to her tendency towards literalism. The others are claiming they stole it with it eventually being revealed they didn’t end up with it in their possession, whereas, Parker was there, and she tried to steal it, but she failed in doing so.

Sophie’s flashback is first, and it’s my least favourite.

There are moments where Nate interacts with her and others within the flashbacks, and this part is cool.

She’s a duchess, and she’s wary of Head of Security Coswell.

With different actors playing the characters, Hardison is the type who commits sexual assault on women, and declaring him severely allergic to shrimp, she sends waitress Parker over with a spiked drink.

It is not cool when allergies are messed with, media.

Eliot is introduced as a doctor, and Sophie is into him to the point where I wonder, in the present, if not for the fact she and Nate have their tension-filled dance going on, would she be interested in possibly having some sexual fun with him?

Using the medical emergency she thought she created, she slips away into a storage closet to change clothes. It turns out she’s also a museum worker.

Coswell appears, and he’s brusque and suspicious. There’s a line here that isn’t in Nate’s flashback but that I believe did happen, “I saw my first duchess upstairs.” And then, there’s a line I hope didn’t happen where he declares, “My men,” when talking about how everything will be shipped despite the fact there’s, at least, one other woman in the room.

It really isn’t hard to say ‘people’ or ‘employees’.

Looking at Sophie even more suspiciously, he declares he’ll be right back, and once he’s gone, she quickly does some paperwork trickery to send the dagger to herself before slipping out. As she ducks out of sight, Coswell re-appears with what I think is either a shotgun or rifle.

I’m not sure Sophie isn’t outright lying here to make her story more dramatic. I do believe she remembers Coswell as incredibly suspicious of her and potentially brusque, but yeah, this man had a long gun stored somewhere in the building, he retrieved it, and then, when he came back, there’s no sounds of the employees in the room he went into freaking out or even just going, ‘Yo, what’s going on?’

When he leaves the room, he doesn’t have the gun with him, and I really don’t think he’d just leave that behind.

Back in the bar, Sophie admits the dagger wasn’t shipped to her despite all this work.

Picking up two cups, Eliot does makeshift glasses to reveal he was the doctor.

In his flashback, someone who sent second-rate thugs (“If I’m not honest with you, you can’t improve,” Eliot tells the protesting thug he has stuck to the wall with a knife) talks to Eliot via phone. This guy wants the dagger, and Eliot can get it for him, or he can keep sending people after Eliot until one finally succeeds.

And so, Eliot is creepy and menacing in stealing a doctor’s clothes and glasses before locking the doctor in the trunk of the doctor’s own car.

Okay, according to IMDb, this happened in 2005. If Eliot knocked the doctor out, fine. If he didn’t, though, then, whilst I freely admit I know little about cars, in 2005, the doctor would have already gotten out of the trunk and had police called by the time Eliot was in the building due to safety features that make it relatively easy for a trapped person to open a car’s trunk.

Inside, he literally bumps into Sophie, and I choose to believe the glasses he stole are messing with his vision. Now, Sophie has a Cockney accent and the stereotypical personality to go with it, and so, she tries to change her story to where Eliot is a yahoo hick.

Hardison has the medical emergency, and to Eliot’s credit, he’s prepared to do a Tracheostomy but is relieved when Hardison takes medicine that makes this unnecessary.

Despite not being a medical professional, and therefore, probably not knowing how certain allergies work, I fully believe Eliot does know how to perform a Tracheostomy and likely has in the past. I don’t think he would have been willing to try here if he didn’t. Therefore, I believe, unlike here where Sophie pushed him into it, he volunteered himself but was greatly relieved when it wasn’t necessary.

He takes Hardison to a private room, and Hardison repeatedly declares he’s in Eliot’s debt.

Since Eliot doesn’t know this is Hardison right now, a relieved Hardison likely was friendly and acted grateful with Eliot missing any cockiness and potential sarcasm Hardison threw in.

Leaving Hardison, Eliot hears the conversation Sophie and Coswell had, hides himself, and then, when Sophie’s back is turned, he tackles a man right behind her.

And no one else in the room saw this? No one, including her, heard this?

Interestingly, in Sophie’s version, she got out less than three minutes after Coswell left, but here, she’s not in such a rush.

After getting a tough door open, Eliot locks the now unconscious and stripped down man in a storage closet. Then, he comes across Coswell carrying a long box with a bow on it. Coswell is trying to find Sophie, and Eliot gets a dig in by having Coswell insult her museum persona’s appearance. Acting the part of an employee, Eliot extracts himself.

Then, having changed clothes again, and I like the fact he’s the one who does this the most out of all the others, he’s a guard on the armoured truck.

Except, the dagger wasn’t in the truck. Instead, a mug was.

In the present, he says, soon after this, the guy sending thugs after him got himself a racketeering charge.

So, Hardison’s all giddy about how he’s the one who stole it.

In the past, he’s definitely having fun with some women, but there’s no sexual assault happening. Sophie and Eliot are dirty dancing on the floor, and given he’s shown taking a picture, I’m wondering if this did actually happen. He tries to fake a medical emergency, and then, ends up with a manic Eliot gleefully wanting to cut him open with a huge knife. Popping breath mints, he’s all, ‘I’m fine! Just need a quiet room to rest in!’

During this, Sophie has a Scottish accent.

In the private room, Eliot is a creepy psychopath, and just like all of the poly trio are teasing Sophie, I view this as Hardison teasing Eliot. Hardison might have been a little uneasy about this actual medical doctor throwing a wrench in his plans plus the whole narrowly avoiding having unneeded surgery performed, but Eliot likely just told him something along the lines of, ‘Rest here, and I’ll check on you/send some to check on you later.’

He sets to stealing, but Coswell comes across him. Luckily, however, Coswell is too focused on finding Sophie to realise he doesn’t belong. The man Eliot locked up stumbles out, and when Coswell tries to help, Hardison locks them both in the closet. He gets to where he sent the dagger via computer.

Back in the present, though, it’s revealed he didn’t get it, either.

Based on Eliot’s reaction when Hardison brings up Eliot and Sophie, I’m starting to wonder if Eliot and she hooked up that night.

Nate gets the other to realise Parker was involved, too.

Flashback to her as a waitress. Hardison is stuffing food into his pockets (likely accurate), and there’s a sweet moment when he offers a nearby woman some of the food before he does. Sophie is speaking literal gibberish.

“I hate you all,” present Sophie responds.

Coswell is a huge jerk about the fact Parker doesn’t have any drinks on her tray, and she rushes away to the refreshment table only to be stopped by Hardison’s medical emergency. Here, she’s the one who declares Eliot will need to open his airway, and she gleefully hands him a huge knife.

In a storage room, she can’t open the door, and so, she goes an alternate way.

She hears Coswell asking about Sophie, and hidden, she catches the mug he knocks down. Here, he has his gun again, and this is her simply believing Sophie’s perception. She puts the mug in the box Eliot eventually opens.

After everyone leaves the room, she steals the dagger, but in the air vents, she discovers she accidentally took Sophie’s bag rather than her own. Then, she comes across Coswell, and fairly reasonably, she assumes he was there to catch her.

The dagger falls.

In the present, Sophie declares Coswell might be smarter than Nate.

Nate reveals he was there that night, too.

In his version, Coswell is a love-struck golly gee man wearing glasses. Parker is rude when Sophie sends over the champagne to Hardison (likely accurate), and grabbing the spiked champagne, Eliot spits it out after taking a sip. I buy this.

Coswell is sort of like Miss Ginger Ale in asking Parker for a drink, and I don’t buy this nor do I buy how big the knife is here. In Sophie and Eliot’s, it was a reasonable size. Hardison likely did see it as much bigger, but Parker and Nate’s versions are them teasing.

In the conversation between Coswell and museum Sophie, Coswell is painfully, obviously smitten with her.

Parker and Eliot try to open the same door to the storage room.

And Coswell is running around practically whining when no one can tell him where Sophie is. He makes it clear to Hardison and Eliot he’s head-over-heels for the woman he’s looking for, he’s extremely nice to the man he got trapped into the storage closet with, and in the vents, he’s more concerned than anything about Parker when he comes across her.

Meanwhile, Nate is being extremely competent to the point he’s basically doing Coswell’s job, and he ends up catching the dagger when Parker loses it.

Finally, a dejected Coswell gives the roses he was going to give to Sophie to Nate for Maggie. Aw.

In the present, Parker says, “Poor Coswell,” and everyone points out: But the dagger was reported stolen.

Yeah, well, this is because Nate figured out the owner of the dagger was committing insurance fraud. A report was put out that it was stolen in order to catch the dealer. In the process, Nate helped get the man who sent Eliot on the racketeering charge.

My view is: Coswell was professional and competent. He might have come across as brusque at times, but he probably opened up to Nate about the crush he had on one of the museum workers and how he planned to tell her that night. Because he was an authority figure specialising in security and they were all active criminals, the poly trio and Sophie all took his interactions with an undercut of menace that likely wouldn’t have been there when viewed from the POV of normal, law-abiding citizens.

Now, it’s revealed the current owner of the dagger is a horrible oil baron, and so, Team Leverage sets out to steal the dagger properly this time.

Edited to add: Since they were all drinking, I'm going to hope they either got a taxivan/several cabs or they took public transportation until, at least, one of them was completely sober, and then, they got a rental/stole a car that the completely sober person drove. 

Fin.


End file.
